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Thursday, 14 March 2013

Learning the other language...!!

Almost three languages are spoken simultaneously in our
household – English, Bengali & Hindi. But now a day we are trying hard to
understand a fourth language which is Mishti’s language. Our little lady is on
a mission to increase her vocabulary by manifold by every passing day. She
would mimic whatever she hears. But most of the time she comes up with some new
word which would refer to that original word. Thus a completely new lingo evolves
which we try to comprehend by ‘hit & trial’ method.

As I spend more time with her than hubby, I am able to make
out almost 80% of her gibberish. No, I won’t term it as gibberish as she tries
her best to talk sense just that the words are in some alien form!!

Few of the typical words Mishti uses and have no link to the
original word are:

Gaga – Nope, she is not talking about that shockingly
dressed singer but she uses it for drinking water!

Gog – Any other water other than drinking water. I think she
started saying ‘Jol’ (bong word for water) as gog and then evolved this gaga.

Boonu – This means button.

Kichin – We first thought it as ‘kitchen’…but later realized
that she is referring to ‘chicken’!

Patta – Now this one is easy to guess – Pasta

Fitti – She calls herself Fitti (Mishti)

Pain – Here airplane is referred.

Boonoon - Balloon

Kaapi - ???? I don’t know what it is but she says it a lot
and gets irritated when we do not understand.

There are lot many other words like ‘mino’, ‘panzi’ ,
‘tabita’ , ‘tima’ which we are not able to decipher till now.

Apart from this she loves to read her books with us and her
favorite are the animal & the vegetable book. So within her limits she
tries to pronounce them and which results is calling Elephant as phant, peacock- peepock, crocodile as
koki, squirrel as skoowee, horse as show ( and she says taga-taga just after
that), monkey as pumkey, capsicum as gumgum, cauliflower as flarr-flarr,
cabbage as papage and so on.

She loves her mongi book ( mowgli- jungle book) a lot and
pretends to read it loudly for constant 4.86 minutes at a stretch. I got her
few panchatantra story books which has bright pictures with one story in a
book. Mishti loves these books and make us to read those stories almost 80
times a day.

Another phrase she has picked up from me is : ‘Ehhh ehhh
chhi chhi dirty’. So each time we come across any heap of sand, mud, or soil
she would loudly parrot this phrase.

She has found this new silly game where we open Google
images and she would say any word, I would type it and she would give amused
look as soon as various images pops up. So, it goes like this:

It continues with different words like ‘soap’, ‘shoes’,
‘clock’, ‘lion’, ‘bag’, ‘phone’ or any other words which she is aware of. But
this game takes a hilarious turn when SG sits with her. He understands half of
what she says and then types those words on pure guess. Result is: Mishti gets
more irritated while not able to make her daddy understand what she want - Daddy keeps on asking ‘Okay tell me what do
you want’ – Mishti shrieking more in frustration!!

Exactly the same story at my home. Though Pari doesn't say names of animals as distincly as Mishti but yes, she too comes up with really interesting names. Gaga in our household stands for a cow :)P.S.- Could you please let me know the writer & publisher of the Panchtantra collection you have.